Op-ed: Why One Blockchain Developer Cannot Build You An Entire App

The blockchain community is a collaborative space, one in which the merits and benefits of a decentralized ledger technology demand the skills of many over the herculean efforts of a single developer. Building off the success of sandboxes, coding boot camps, and open source platforms like Github, blockchain technology takes the egalitarian and collaborative impulses latent in these initiatives and extends them across a number of appealing potential use cases.

The underlying technology is different from previous developer paradigms and is very much still in its early growth stage. While the allure of getting a quick and easy DApp on the market is always there, the bottom line is that in order to future-proof DApps you cannot cut corners on the underlying architecture – something which is bound to happen if you employ one developer to build your entire blockchain app. This is why you should avoiding hiring a single developer to build a blockchain app and instead recruit the services of a professional blockchain development company that has the internal resources and processes to create apps to your exact specifications.

The Functionality of the App May Not Align With Your Business Goals

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One of the most common problems in product development cycles is miscommunication between the visionaries of the product (often the founders) and the dev team. Some founders think that employing a single developer will help smooth over communication regarding product specs, feature functionality, and user experience; while this approach might work for apps built with established languages like Java, C++ or Python and hosted in the cloud, working this way on a blockchain app is rife with inefficiencies and product development issues. There are a whole host of different features and functions a blockchain app can be designed for. Do you want proof of work or proof of stake protocol? How will the normal processing of information be achieved across the ledger? Will users be able to invest and trade crypto and fiat currencies? Executing on all of these without delay is difficult for a single developer to achieve; it will undoubtedly lead to delays and perhaps a final product that does not align with your business goals.

Security Is A Major Concern that SIngle Developers Cannot Properly Account For

Blockchain protocols are not a sufficient bulwark against bad actors. Security concerns absolutely cannot be overlooked from the earliest planning stages of your app, especially if you are facilitating money or token transfers through the network. While users can protect their personal wealth by keeping a cold wallet, your app code is tied to the network and visible for all developers to see (despite the immutability of transactions). Creating secure connections across the blockchain ecosystem is going to be a fundamental determinant in whether your application succeeds or fails, and yet security is not usually something a single developer can properly account for. They may install some thin layers of defense against bugs and scammers but in general, security falls out of the purview of a blockchain app developer. Professional blockchain development companies have cybersecurity experts on staff to ensure that your app is built like a fortress, resilient against bugs and bad actors trying to rip consumers data.

Blockchain Apps Require Constant Upkeep

To future-proof your blockchain app it needs to have daily upkeep and optimization. Every blockchain created is slightly different, and as such, each requires different sorts of feature upgrades over time. Maintaining the app to perform at optimal levels within the network is absolutely crucial, and this means constantly checking and balancing against what is needed to operate better and what is turning into technological debt. Local and remote queries will need to be possible; mining efforts (if they exist) will need to be economized where possible, while keeping up to date with software and system upgrades is paramount to future-proofing of an app built on a blockchain protocol that is bound to look very different in two years compared to today.

A single developer will never be able to keep up to speed on all these fronts. This is where a professional blockchain development company comes in once again, ensuring that the range of development, design and analytic services for your blockchain application projects are seamlessly rolled out and augmented with industry best-practices over time.

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Manju Mohan has a background in computer science, economics, instructional design, and UX design. She is the CEO and Co-Founder of Ionixx Technologies ­ a design, web, mobile and blockchain technologies service provider.